During recent years in the designing or retrofitting of buildings, there has become an ever more pressing need to increase design flexibility. With the pervasive use of digital electronics, building designs now need to incorporate such infrastructure as digital communications, Internet connections, local area network connections, increased voice communications capability, and the like. Also, more and more appliances, such as security, sound, paging, heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, heating and cooling systems are digitally controlled. This technology has placed even more stress on the building design which has to include communications bus systems between the various appliances and some central control system.
The building management systems that control these appliances have also evolved. Computer control is now fundamental to building management systems. This has lead the way to the measurement and control of the aforementioned appliances. By adding computer control, great savings in energy costs are achieved in terms of turning devices on or off, or adjusting appliances, based upon user needs or even user projected needs. Also, the remote control of systems has enabled the building management function to be done off premises.
Building management systems contain various appliances for building service functions, a control system for control and regulation of the appliances, and a communication bus for communication of signals between the control system and the appliances. Such a system is used for the central management of building functions, such as lighting, heating, and ventilation etc. The appliances include, for example, lighting, heating equipment, air-conditioning devices or electrically movable window blinds. In office buildings and commercial and industrial complexes, the central management of energy consumption services allows a relatively easy adjustment of the level of light or temperature to the actual existing demand at any moment. This results in considerable savings of energy and costs. Such a system precisely monitors energy consumption and enables accurate billing of the users in a multi-user building. Such a building management system can also be used for peak saving purposes to comply with the requirements of an electric company to keep power consumption below an agreed maximum level.
Many building management systems have different capability, which leads to having different transmitter/receiver devices in the same ceiling system, or more importantly, a different method to integrate these different transmitter/receiver devices. For instance, one communication system may require one frequency setting whereas another communication system may require an entirely different frequency setting. Also, one communication system may require a certain power or gain, whereas another would be different. Antenna gain is related to antenna size, and therefore if more gain is needed, the size of the antenna is increased.
Aesthetics have become of primary importance in building ceiling systems. Many ceiling manufacturers offer a wide variety of designs and colors for their suspended ceiling systems.
Furthermore, many appliances are attached or hung from the ceiling panels or ceiling suspension grids. Today unfortunately, theft and vandalism have become issues, and at times devices such as smoke detectors, fire alarms, lighting fixtures, etc. have been vandalized.
In the known systems, the local controllers and the appliances are connected to the communication bus by wires. In a modem office building or commercial complex this is a drawback as space layouts are often changed. Changing space layouts almost always requires displacement of the appliances and frequently the tearing down and rebuilding of internal walls. To achieve a flexible floor layout at low cost, a minimum amount of wiring in the walls is required. However, it is also essential that the users of a building have full control over the location of the appliances; consequently, placing appliances only at predetermined locations is unacceptable. In current systems, a hard-wired communication bus is used to connect to the local room wireless transmitter/receiver systems. These wireless transmitter/receiver systems are used to communicate between the bus and the appliances in the room. However, the communication bus system is still a xe2x80x9chardwiredxe2x80x9d configuration. This leads to a decrease in flexibility, since a room""s square footage may change over time, and therefore the transmitter/receiver devices and the hardwired communication bus may also need to be changed or rerouted. Rerouting or changing current transmitter/receiver devices requires modifying ceiling panels (drilling/punching/cutting) and replacing the ceiling tiles that had the transmitter/receiver device in it.
Another problem occurs in that transmitter/receiver devices have poor aesthetics when suspended from ceiling panels. After much design and expense have been invested in a ceiling panel system, a rod or dish antenna system is added to the ceiling panel to allow it to communicate to appliances below. There has not been much consideration given in terms of the room aesthetics of a joint system of antennas and ceiling panels.
Another problem occurring in the industry is vandalism and theft. When devices can be physically seen, they are more prone to be tampered with or removed.
Still another problem occurs in the design of ceiling tile panels that can be integrated with antennas of different sizes. In the manufacturing and sales of ceiling tiles, processes have to be made flexible to account for all of the different part numbers corresponding to transmitter/receiver devices.
The basic concept of the present invention is to attach or embed at least one transmitter/receiver device in a ceiling panel either during or after the ceiling panel manufacturing process. The invention concept involves a number of related embodiments. In a first embodiment at least one pocket depression is formed on the backside of the ceiling panel, of variable size and shape, by the ceiling panel manufacturing process and then a transmitter/receiver device, such as an RF antenna, is inserted and rigidly fixed in the pocket after ceiling panel manufacturing. The terms ceiling panel and ceiling tile are used interchangeably throughout this description.
In another embodiment, the transmitter/receiver device is embedded in the front side of the ceiling tile and a xe2x80x9cscrimxe2x80x9d covering is placed over it. The transmitter/receiver device can also be embedded inside the ceiling tile or rigidly fixed on the top or side surface of the ceiling tile. The transmitter/receiver device can also be embedded on the front surface of the ceiling tile, where the transmitter adds to, or integrates into, the overall aesthetics of the ceiling tile. Various combinations of these embodiments can be used with a single ceiling tile.
Other inventive concepts involve manufacturing aspects. There are several different ceiling tile manufacturing processes that can be used for embedding the transmitting/receiving devices. A high temperature resistant xe2x80x9cplace holdingxe2x80x9d structure that can withstand the ceiling tile treatments can also be provided that can be removed later to allow the mounting of the transmitter/receiver device.